The world of surgery is a dramatically changing environment today. New surgical technologies are rapidly developing, many of which have transformed methods of treatment for both the patient and the surgeon. The STITCH project is aimed at improving technology to make laparoscopy and other types of minimally invasive surgery less stressful, both physically and mentally, for the surgeon.

Our research is showing that a comprehensive framework for measuring cognitive human factors in minimally invasive surgery settings will provide an important set of nonredundant metrics. The metrics can be used for evaluating performance in the context of new technologies, tasks and learning methodologies. These results will be useful for implementing improvements in training methods that seek to use valid cognitive measures as part of the assessment strategy. The research team is developing new technologies for advanced medical techniques that can be used on the battlefield, which is important for the US Army, and also more broadly in the general surgical environment.

To see a collection of resources created during this project, click here.